Harlem Air Shaft, Ellington’s attempt at capturing the variety of life, sounds, smells, and energy of Harlem, leans on the contributions of three signature pillars of Ellington’s band, Barney Bigard on clarinet, Nanton on trombone, and Williams on trumpet. The piece’s “jubilant, spirited, carefree” quality, as Ted Gioia terms it, stems from Ellington’s careful orchestration, as he uses the fifteen-member band to create differing and intertwining lines of melody and harmony. In addition, Gioia specifically mentions the three instances in which the melody slows and the rhythm section drops out, only for the band to come back in full swing, as  “masterpiece[s] in deferred gratification.”  Harlem Air Shaft also demonstrates Ellington’s ability to incorporate the freedom and improvisational sounds and foundations of early jazz with big band and swing. 
Happy Go Lucky Local is another tone poem, evoking the resigned feeling of taking a local train that plods along to every stop, but with the swing, attitude, and force that a seventeen-player band and eight-member brass section provide. The piece is heavily derived from the blues, featuring a dizzying array of extended blue notes in solos as well as stunning, unearthly sounds from several instruments. Ellington’s experimental side is on full display in Happy Go Lucky Local, maximizing the potential of each instrument and player to create unusual and unique textures and tones.
	Ellington’s incorporation of blues elements into his music spans his career, though his ability to innovate with structure is most notable in Jack the Bear. Upon listening, one can discern full choruses of the twelve bar blues, but intermixed with different structures and styles. Gioia goes into depth about the particular structure Ellington created for the song, but suffice it to say that Ellington’s capacity for complexity and brilliance in modifying styles, composing for a big band, and creating unique tone qualities is vast.  Like almost everything else about Ellington, his ability to innovate with regard to structure crossed categories such as the size of the band. An example of this is The Clothed Woman, performed by a much smaller ensemble of six. Here, in a six-person ensemble, Ellington’s piano playing takes the forefront, as he uses “ hints of atonality mixed in with elements of stride and blues.”  Ellington’s stylistic trait of molding different aspects of different styles into cohesive pieces was one source of his endless creativity as a composer. As his legacy suggests, Ellington was a gifted, prolific, and charismatic composer, bandleader, and pianist who earned his place as one of the most important figures in jazz.


	J. Edgar Hoover successfully amassed an unprecedented level of power within American government and society throughout his five decades as director of the FBI. The release of FBI documents and increased public scrutiny of his years at the FBI that resulted from his death in 1972 led to the discovery that Hoover had extensively abused his position. 